


“Darra Shandai Mijana Thel-Tanis: An Unheroic Sacrificial Offering”

by Polgarawolf



Series: Star Wars: You Became to Me [45]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Attempted Murder, Congenital Malformation of the Heart, Dreams, Emotional Manipulation, Expanded Universe Character Death(s), Expanded Universe Characters, F/F, F/M, Fear, Fear of Discovery, Heart Attack, Hypocrisy, Infatuation, Jedi (sacrificial ethics), Jedi Code, Love-sickness, M/M, Manipulations, Mental Anguish, Mental Breakdown, Mental Disintegration, Obi-Wan Kenobi equals unrequited love (unless you're Anakin Skywalker), Obsession, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), Secret Relationship, Secret pregnancy, Secrets, Sexism, Sith, Skewed priorities, Slavery, Suicide by battle, Suicide in combination with infanticide, Surgery, Teen Pregnancy, Trauma, Unplanned Pregnancy, Visions, War, cowardice, dark side, near-drowning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-30
Updated: 2008-09-30
Packaged: 2017-11-13 19:58:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/507166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polgarawolf/pseuds/Polgarawolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is thirty-six random but essentially chronological moments from the life of Jedi Padawan Darra Thel-Tanis, who, after finding herself unexpectedly pregnant, allows herself to be slain on a mission, so that she won’t have to suffer through the shame of being cast out of the Jedi Order for her indiscretion and violation of the Jedi Code in regards to the rule forbidding attachments. There is an actual story here – one small thread among the vast woven tapestry of life that is the living history of the galaxy, stretched out and twisted, knotted into the whole, curled down among the roots of time, connecting various moments together – but one must read between the lines to capture it. It is not precisely the truth, for the subtle story of these moments is sketched out here in words, and, in the sin of writing down a life, it inevitably changes the shape of things. But it is nevertheless a form of truth. (From a certain point of view . . . )</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. “Darra Shandai Mijana Thel-Tanis: An Unheroic Sacrificial Offering”

**Author's Note:**

> **Author’s Notes: 1.)** Again, this is compatible with my SW AU series **_You Became to Me_** , including my _Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith_ trio, if you squint at a couple of things sideways and view a few others solely through the lens of Darra’s (admittedly not always the most reliable or unclouded) eyes. **2.)** Although this is technically modeled on a prompt set that I borrowed from somewhere on the LJ (I don’t recall from where anymore, though if someone would like to set the record straight, I’ll add the info for the community in question here in my notes), it’s not really meant to function as a response to the challenge associated with that set. I just used the specific prompts to give me a reason to string together a backstory of sorts for Darra. **3.)** Readers interested in knowing who the physical models are for EU characters, like Darra, Ferus, Tru, Soara Antana, etc., or for original characters, like Jedi Knight Nemaria Tennyai, for that matter, should please consult the latest versions of my posted lists of cast original and EU characters and for handmaid(en)s and other important Nabooian characters, which are all available on my LJ! For clarity's sake, though, please note that I picture a young Julia Stiles as Darra Shandai Mijana Thel-Thanis, a very androgynous (y'all will understand why I'm specifiying that, later), silver-eyed version of Keanu Reeves and also a somewhat androgynous, silver-eyed version of Katie Leung (again, y'all will understand why I'm specifiying that, later) as Tru Veld, Robert Pattinson (with appropriate streaky hair) as Ferus Olin, Kelly Macdonald as Jedi Master Soara Antana, and Clive Owen as Jedi Master Ry-Gaul. Please note that characters who may be alluded to but not referenced by name or only mentioned in passing (minor original characters and certain family members of original or EU characters, for example) are considered too minor to be cast at this time, and that readers should feel free to imagine them howsoever they wish (within reason, given their genetic backgrounds)! **4.)** Darra’s odd dreams aren’t exactly as random or as meaningless as she believes them to be, though she doesn’t live long enough to discover that for herself. Readers who think that they recognize parts of those dreams from ’verses other than the **Star Wars** GFFA (i.e., _Firefly_ / _Serenity_ and the re-imagined _Battlestar Galactica_ / _Caprica_ ) aren’t wrong, though technically there’s some overlap of elements between the ’verses in question, which has personally led me to believe that the physical spaces of said ’verses exist within or in extremely close proximity to the GFFA and so are intimately tied up with the history and the destiny of the GFFA. Anyone confused by this or concerned/curious about the possible implications of this proximity/overlap for my SW AU series should please feel free to email me with their questions! **5.)** Ferus essentially has Darra and Tru spying on Obi-Wan from the moment he first becomes aware of him, and, while she may make some questionable/outright bad decisions over the course of her life, Darra isn't an idiot (hence, most of the relationship labels on this story). **6.)** The group project “poem” Darra, Ferus, and Tru write will be included at the back of this piece, as it will with the stories I intend to write for Ferus and for Tru. Certain lines may sound familiar to readers, as they are taken from certain modern and contemporary pieces, to give the “joke” authenticity. **7.)** Readers should _**please**_ note that the specific circumstances surrounding Darra’s death on Korriban as explained here (i.e., her reasons for acting as she does) are pretty much entirely my own invention and that I arrived at the notion mostly due to the fact that I couldn’t logically explain how a Jedi – even a half trained Jedi Padawan – could be killed in such a manner unless that Jedi were, for some reason, either deliberately ignoring or else acting against the warnings/promptings of the Force. **8.)** Suicide has always struck me as one of the most despicably cowardly and horrifically selfish things a person can possibly do and I believe that the outcome of this story plainly illustrates a dangerous weakness/flaw in Darra’s character; however, it should be noted that Darra’s actions and her thoughts are at least in part influenced by Ferus Olin’s peculiar talents, so readers should probably at least try to give her the benefit of the doubt, despite what she does.

**"Darra Shandai Mijana Thel-Tanis: An Unheroic Sacrificial Offering"**

　

　

 **01.) Scandal:** Though she will not live long enough for the Jedi to release her personal records to her, the truth is that her father was a minor aide to Den Skeenah (the then junior Senator for Chandrila) who pretended to be otherwise (deliberately putting on airs and appropriating the titles and positions of other, far better men) so that he could seduce the maid (a young and surprisingly naïve Coruscanti native whose parents ran a tailoring shop he frequented on behalf of his Senator) who would, at the age of just barely fifteen, cause a great scandal in her solidly middle-class neighborhood by becoming Darra’s mother, carrying Darra to term primarily due to the fact that prenatal tests had revealed that she possessed midi-chlorians enough to be accepted by the Jedi Order and promptly giving her over to the Order within a day of having her, resulting in Darra becoming the youngest of her agemates to be accepted as an initiate in the crèche.

 **02.) Reason:** Darra remembers nothing but the Coruscanti Jedi Temple, the crèche with its dormitories arranged by age-group and gender (only those in need of such highly specialized environments that they absolutely could not survive in the same environment or atmosphere as the majority permitted to have separate chambers – usually grouped in such instances by species rather than by age or training class – and, with only one exception, only those whose unique physiology would cause them to age/mature at a far faster or much slower rate than humans and most near-humans as well as all of the humanoids who also age/mature at a rate roughly similar to that of humans ever allowed to move among the various ranks of initiates in the dormitories, shifting dormers whenever they physically and/or mentally/emotionally caught up with or passed by another age-group), never knows any other life or possible way of life than that of the Temple, the Order, the Code, service to the Force, the Jedi, the Galactic Republic, and so she never particularly has any kind of personal reason to doubt or to question the way that she’s been brought up and trained from infanthood onwards to make of herself a perfect and willing vessel for the Force and the Force’s will, in the name of the Jedi Order and the Galactic Republic.

 **03.) Alien:** Tru Veld, as a Teevan of the gender metamorph persuasion, is a glaring exception to the organization of the crèche dormitories – able to be either fully female or fully male and, sometimes, a mix of both so peculiar that it cannot quite be said to truly resemble either sex, Tru variably belongs in the male and in the female dormitory for Darra’s own age-group, and so has to switch back and forth and then back and forth again, over and over and over (supposedly for propriety’s sake), resulting initially in confusion and a very unJedi-like fear (and, subsequently, anger and dislikefor, as the fearful see it, being the cause of such fear) in both dormers – and, the first time that switch from the male to the female dormer is made after those residing within have all gotten old enough to be fairly steady on their feet, the exotic little girl with the huge, sad, bright silver eyes and flawless silvery pale skin and lustrous ebony hair just looks so very lost and alone and wistful (full of quiet sadness, of plaintive sorrow) that Darra can’t help but reach out and gather her in, take her under her wing, befriend her and defend her from the small minds and ill tempers of the others in their age-group, who simply don’t seem to know how to take someone who looks so human but whose body is actually so different from those of human norms (so strange, so alien, and, thus, so frightening) that it switches from male to female and back again over and over and over, at will, and so badly resent Tru’s presence among them.

 **04.) Friend:** Tru is terribly smart, behind her silent repose, extremely intuitively gifted at all kinds of combat (both defensive and offensive), despite her façade of stillness and tranquility, and in possession of a wicked sense of humor, irregardless of her sad (almost tear-shaped) eyes, and so Darra quickly finds herself well rewarded for her kindness and protectiveness, Tru sticking close to her and blossoming into a very good friend in an extremely short period of time.

 **05.) Haunt:** She has odd dreams, sometimes – bizarre fragmented things that make very little sense to her: crowds of people in groups of what look like hundreds of copies of the exact same person, over and over again, all standing together in rows; waves upon waves of what look like hastily cobbled together transport ships taking flight away from a world that looks so poisoned with pollution, so stripped bare of vegetation and life, that she has a hard time imagining how the beings clearly in those ships ever could have survived on that plainly dying if not already dead planet’s surface; strange single-fighter ships that look like they should be in an antique museum somewhere (save for the fact that they’re far too raggedly rough around the edges and beat up to properly belong on display) lined up neatly in rows on what looks as if it might be some kind of functional flight deck, though the flooring looks like nothing she’s ever seen or read or heard of being on an actual carrier ship for fighters; a tangle of . . . abominations that may have once been ships, vicious symbols in paint red as blood smeared here and there on places where the hulls are still relatively smooth, so many places torn apart and crammed full of jagged spikes and bits and pieces of clearly cannibalized machines and weaponry and frozen, desecrated bits of chained down bodies that surprisingly few of the carmine sigils are present on the ships, floating in the blackness of space above a world full of peaceful poison and ruins and restless ghosts; numerous small groups of people in several different kinds of odd uniforms she cannot recognize (some of them in fewer items of said uniforms than others, handfuls of them even halfway peeled out of what looks like it might be some kind of old-fashioned flight suit, the olivine material strangely heavy looking) gathered around tables in what looks like a mess hall, eating and drinking and smoking and chatting and catcalling each other, most of them either playing some sort of strange card game or watching as their fellows play; a pair of creatures that look like men but are not, wearing strangely cut formal clothing, brightly azure blue gloves tight around the skin of their hands; a redheaded man in a heap of abject misery on the ground, voice nearly cracking with anguish as he cries out protestingly, "This wasn’t supposed to happen again!" and, "Haven’t we already given enough?" as he grasps violently at his own hair; a dead world, floating in space, where a vibrant living planet of rolling grassy plains and wide-stretching deep seas and forests of behemoth trees and rushing rivers and craggy mountains should have been; the shape of five indistinct but probably human or at least humanoid figures, backlit in such a manner that nothing of them can be seen but vague blots of darkness against the blinding white light; an extremely young woman’s voice, half whispering and half snarling, "Did you think I would ever forget what you did to me or forgive you for your crimes?" the words so full of coldness and hate that even remembering them makes her cringe; a voice, strangely flat, declaring, "End of line," over and over and over and over again, until the din of the repeated words makes her want to scream; a man’s voice, the words, "We have done the impossible, and that makes us mighty," weaving dissonantly in and out of another declaration, "I aim to misbehave," the syllables as jagged and sharp and hard as javelins; a woman’s voice, oddly familiar, desperately whispering, "There must be some kind of way out of here," the words infused with an odd sense of mantra, of prayer, as if, by simply speaking them, she can force them to be true; etc. – and wakes from them shaken, shaking, feeling sickly off-kilter and breathlessly frantic and aching with grief, as if what she’s been seeing, her visions, are true, are things that she’s actually witnessed, experienced, memories coming back to haunt her, unable, for far too long a time, to remember where she truly is and that what she’s been seeing are only dreams, not true, nothing but the random weird images fired off by an apparently badly overloaded and stressed brain decompressing for slumber, often unable to lie back down or calm herself enough to go back to sleep again unless Tru is there and, alerted by her noises of distress, wakes enough to come crawl into the narrow bed beside her and hug her close, rubbing soothing circles across her back and softly murmuring reassurances until she lulls her back to sleep, the proximity of her body somehow keeping the dreams from returning.

 **06.) Magic:** Ferus Olin just _appears_ in the crèche one day, as though by magic – mysterious, smiling, all but visibly shining with potential power, and already heartbreakingly handsome, with his perfectly carved features and smooth alabaster skin, enchanting large hazel-grey eyes that constantly seem to be shifting color (dark and seemingly brown from a distance, behind the thick fringe of his dark eyelashes, but far lighter up close and full of tiny flecks of a multitude of colors, those shades shifting with his activities and mood and the ambient light: dull, cool blue-grey when he is solemn and the light is low; pale silvery-green when he is sparring and the lighting is constant, artificial; vivid grass green when he is happy, especially if he is outdoors, in more natural lighting; an odd mix of blue and amber-gold and amber-green when he is thinking hard about something, especially if he is concentrating on figuring something out or if he’s outside when the sun is still rising or is beginning to set; blazing bright golden-grey when he is upset or the lighting is uneven, as with candlelight; so dark as to nearly seem black, when he is aggrieved or furious or brokenhearted; and so on), and thick wavy hair full of so many different shades of color that it seems ridiculous to say that it’s either brown or bronze or indeed merely any one singular hue, especially given the blaze of bright gold at the front, shining in contrast to the ever so slightly russet-tinged darkness beneath – and she can feel her heart shifting within her, realigning to him the moment she gets her first glimpse of him, making he desperately happy that Tru (who is currently in his male phase) has already made friends with the incredible boy.

 **07.) Star:** Ferus very quickly becomes the shining star of the crèche – he has more power, more grace, more potential, more intelligence, more kind, patient, gentle good humor, more charisma, and far more control than any other initiate in their age-group or indeed the next six age-groups above them – and she and Tru become much more widely known very quickly, since they are his closest friends in the crèche and he does not hesitate to present them to others as such.

 **08.) Knowledge:** She knows who Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn are, of course – Obi-Wan and one of his friends, Garen Muln, are the ones who taught her how to walk, when she was still a toddler, having been among a group of Padawans assigned to help watch over the youngest of the younglings at the same time that she was first figuring out how to balance on her feet, Obi-Wan patiently encouraging her and offering his hands, to help steady her, while Garen backed slowly away, to keep her moving forward. Obi-Wan picked her up and hugged her, when she latched on to his legs that evening and wouldn’t let him leave, walking her over to her little bed with its raised sides and tucking her securely in, Garen joining him in singing her a lullaby until she finally fell asleep. She would hardly ever see him, afterwards, because of the sixteen (almost seventeen) years separating them, in age, but he’d always have a kind smile for her, in those brief encounters and glimpses across Temple hallways and the gardens, and so she remembers him fondly as one of the kindest souls in the Temple. How he ended up with such a seemingly stern and aloof Master as Knight Jinn perplexes Darra endlessly, until an older initiate finally explains to her one day about the Grand Master himself pairing them as Master and Padawan. Even then, though, she still doesn’t really understand what Master Yoda could’ve been thinking, to put someone as warm as Obi-Wan with someone as cold as Qui-Gon Jinn, especially since, by then, she’s heard more than enough stories about the missions they’ve undertaken to be fairly certain that Master Jinn doesn’t care very much about his apprentice’s health or safety, as he seems pathologically incapable of tempering his recklessness, even when it puts him at odds with the Council Masters’ orders or places him and Obi-Wan in extremely dangerous situations – but then, since she’s been at the Temple for essentially her whole life, she takes that knowledge for granted, not even realizing that Ferus may not know who they are, until after he’s come back from a trip to the Healers’ Ward starry-eyed and utterly unable to stop talking about Obi-Wan.

 **09.) Response:** After Ferus first notices Obi-Wan Kenobi, it’s as though someone has switched on a light inside him – Ferus literally _glows_ , from even something so small as the thought of the young apprentice – and, though it pains Darra, a little, to see how undeniably strongly he reacts to the Padawan learner (a part of her – a shamefully large part – wishes he would react to her in such a way), she’s also glad for him, certain from the strength of his response alone that he must have found his Master and perhaps (though she knows she should not be thinking such a thing, that it is against the Jedi Code as well as ridiculously romantic) even the other half of his soul.

 **10.) Contradiction:** Obi-Wan’s Master, Qui-Gon Jinn, strikes Darra as a contradiction in terms – a blazing presence in the Force, all but suffused with the Living Force, whose inability to see the truth of his own remarkable apprentice quite frankly makes no kind of sense; an individual who surrounds himself with growing things (often bringing back multiple clippings and starts of various flora from his missions, to plant in the Temple gardens) and goes out of his way to rescue strays, yet who also dislikes being near the crèche and the younglings and has great difficulty mustering any kindness or gentleness for his own Padawan; a Jedi Knight of high repute who apparently is also a not very closeted sensualist; an idealist whose refusal to bend often has him at loggerheads with the High Council and yet who cannot seem to tolerate even a hint of questioning from others, especially his apprentice; and more – and there are occasions when she finds herself wondering if the man is entirely sane . . . or if it would be too ridiculously paranoid to suggest that someone else might be influencing some of his almost schizophrenic behavior.

 **11.) Triumph:** Tru may be the one who’s figured out a way for Ferus to research the possibility, but Darra’s the one who first thought to suggest that the Grand Master’s level of interest in and meddling with Obi-Wan’s life might actually be due to a vision he had or a prophecy he heard or read about the teen, so she considers it her triumph, when Ferus finds a copy of a more recent version of the prophecy of the Chosen One and, with a calm sureness that instantly makes her believe him, immediately declares that the prophecy is about Obi-Wan.

 **12.) Dance:** The first time Darra sees Obi-Wan and Ferus spar together, she’s so stunned that she literally forgets to breathe and eventually has to sit down (hard, gracelessly) to keep from falling over, they’re just so – so – so very far beyond anything she’s ever seen before, so beautiful and graceful and impossibly fast and bright with the Force’s embrace, dancing and spinning and flying about the practice salle as if gravity and other such laws of physics simply no longer applied to them, playing off of each other naturally, effortlessly, as though it were the simplest thing in the ’verse to do, as if they were born to it, to dance together, to move like two halves of a single whole, as though Ferus were merely the shadow Obi-Wan cast and so could not help but to mirror, meet, match, counter, _complete_ every single move the Padawan might ever make.

 **13.) Ordinary:** Darra is painfully aware of the fact that she is extremely ordinary – more than strong enough in the Force to justify being trained as a Jedi, but certainly unremarkable next to the likes of Jedi Masters such as Mace Windu and Adi Gallia or Jedi Knights like Depa Billaba, Shaak Ti, and Stass Allie; smart, but mostly just clever and very well-read rather than actively intuitively intelligent, meaning that she has to work hard at everything and cannot even count on her connection to the Force to help her overly much when it comes to remembering or even understanding certain things; pretty, but nothing more than that, and only in the sense that she is young and slender and supple and in possession of long, clean lines, bright (if slightly unusually colored), warm, rusty-brown eyes, milky pale smooth skin, and healthy, shining, slightly red-tinged light golden brown hair – and so she is both unutterably thrilled and utterly shocked when she seems to catch the eye of someone as intelligent and talented and incontrovertibly gorgeous as Ferus Olin, having been all but certain (right up until their first kiss, anyway) that, aside from Obi-Wan, Ferus was seriously interested only in Tru Veld and that the exotic and undeniably beautiful Teevan would end up becoming Ferus’ pillow friend, in the end, if anyone did.

 **14.) Practice:** The older Darra grows, the more desperately she finds herself wanting Ferus’ presence, his attention, his smiles, his touch . . . yet, ever the self-blind idiot, it isn’t until she finds herself literally falling before and beneath him, in a (thankfully private) practice sparring match of their own – gasping at the delicious weight of him over her, curling up into him automatically, right hand snaking up to tangle in the cloth of his tunics and urge him closer, body arching like a bow as he freezes above her (part of his weight on the hands braced above her shoulders – having dropped his lightsaber to keep from accidentally skewering her – keeping him from crushing her against the mats with his greater bulk), eyes dark with shock and heated with something that looks so much like desire that, daring greatly, she raises her left hand to thread through his hair and, tugging gently, pulls him the rest of the way down, raising her head to press her mouth to his – that she finally fully consciously understands that she’s infatuated with him, falling in love with him, in serious danger of giving in to the lure of an attachment utterly forbidden by the Jedi Code.

 **15.) Wrong:** A part of her knows all too well that what she’s doing is wrong – the Jedi Order technically permits its members to have pillow friends, casual sexual partners within the Order, to help encourage the building of trust between peers and potential partners on more complex missions and to give both older initiates and younger Padawans a way to explore their bodies and sexual preferences (since sex is, after all, potentially yet another weapon in a Jedi’s arsenal, to be used – and used well – if a situation calls for such a use) in a safe environment; the rule against attachment still holds, though, and the High Council has been known to separate individuals or even to send beings away from the Temple, to the Service Corps, if such a relationship seems to be becoming something more, with bonds and affections running deeper than they should. She already cared for Ferus far more than she ever should have, long before sex got thrown into the mix, too, and the fact that she’s only growing steadily more and more dependent on his presence in her life now is an obvious sign of dangerously strong attachment, the kind of attachment that could easily get her and (Force forfend!) perhaps even Ferus cast out of the Order entirely – but that doesn’t stop her from justifying it to herself (she’s not hurting anyone but herself with her growing fascination with and desire for Ferus; she’s not doing anything that vast numbers of others within the Order haven’t already done, given the prevalence within the Temple of Knights and Masters with pillow friends who often seem much more than just casual sexual partners; she’s not asking anything of Ferus but what he’s willing to give and, as long as she refrains from blurting out declarations of inappropriate affection or trying to limit his interactions with others – even if he is so kind and warm and generous that he seems unable to turn away anyone who seeks to share his bed and it kills her, to see him with others and to know that those others are actively trying to seduce him, planning to eventually seduce him, or just bluntly asking him outright for sex – won’t actually be taking advantage of his warm and giving nature, either; and so on and so forth, with other such pathetic excuses for self-defense) or from taking advantage of her closeness to Ferus and his willingness to indulge her at every possible opportunity.

 **16.) Concern:** Since Darra pays far more attention to Ferus than she should (after all, a Jedi is not to have attachments, should not care for the happiness and well-being of one when the safety and security and rights of many are constantly being threatened, and it is her biggest failing, her greatest flaw, that she cannot seem to stop herself from loving Ferus, despite knowing that she’s breaking the Jedi Code, thus, and truly deserves no better than to be cast out of the Order for her defiance, her weakness), she knows that something is wrong even before he seems to realize his own unease, and is unsurprised that, when pressed, he admits to having had a hard time sleeping lately and to being worried about Obi-Wan, even though he can’t articulate anything like a logical reason for his concern.

 **17.) Fire:** She and Tru and Ferus are carrying their lunch trays to a table in the cafeteria most regularly used by initiates when all of a sudden Ferus’ face drains of all color, his drink and tray tumbling from abruptly nerveless fingers as he dazedly murmurs, "The world is on fire – Obi-Wan, _Force_ , don’t go after him there!" before, with a shudder, seeming to regain his senses . . . and then bolting for the nearest door, Tru barely two steps behind, Darra so stunned that all she can do is stand there dumbly and gape after them.

 **18.) Search:** She doesn’t find out until hours later that Obi-Wan has been chosen to go out into Coruscant’s dangerous underlevels in search of a missing Padawan, Darsha Assant, and her Master, Anoon Bondara, the Order’s Sword Master, who went out after her and failed to return, either with her or alone, and it takes even longer than that for tales of a Sith Assassin and a stolen Holocron full of plans concerning an obscure Mid Rim world, Naboo, that’s been blockaded illegally by the Trade Federation, to reach her; she knows at once that Ferus has had a disturbing vision of some kind, though, and Obi-Wan is a ridiculously easy person to care for, so she spends most of her time trying to meditate, while she waits for news and an explanation of some kind, hoping that things will somehow turn out for the best, asking the Force to send strength and protection to the young Padawan, for Ferus’ sake as well as for Obi-Wan’s. 

 **19.) Warn:** A week after Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon Jinn have been sent to Naboo, a grim-faced Tru seeks her out to warn her that he’s afraid something extremely bad is happening and that worse may be coming – that Ferus has drifted off nine times that he knows of in the past five days into visions that have left him shaky and pale, and woke the boys’ dormer the previous night screaming about fire and darkness – and that Ferus needs them to be close, to be strong for him, so he’ll have someone to lean on, to anchor himself to, no matter what may or may not happen.

 **20.) Nobody:** Anakin Skywalker is nothing she ever could have anticipated, nothing she ever would have expected, and frankly she’s too busy being shocked over the whole progression of events by which this nobody former slave from Tatooine has somehow been made Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Padawan learner to really be able to take him in, properly.

 **21.) Understand:** She can’t even begin to understand what could possibly be going through Obi-Wan’s mind that could even begin to explain why he’s so suddenly gone from openly favoring Ferus above all others in the crèche to behaving as though Ferus is some kind of deviant fiend and baldly blaming him for that idiot boy nearly managing to drown himself (really, what was Skywalker _thinking_ would happen? That the Force would suddenly grant him the ability to swim, despite the fact that he’d never even seen enough water gathered together in one place to allow a human to swim before being taken to Naboo, simply because he was too proud and too stupid to ignore the [mostly] good-natured teasing of a few initiates too ignorant of his background to know that he came from a desert world and so would have no reason to know how to swim?), and that’s why she volunteers to try to get closer to Skywalker, because she honestly is afraid that he might be doing something to Obi-Wan to cloud his mind and wants very much to be able to expose the little monster’s perfidy if that’s what he’s actually doing, so they can get him out of the Temple and out of their lives and things can go back to normal, to the way they used to be, the way they _should_ be (and would be, still, if only Anakin Skywalker weren’t at the Temple), and Ferus can be happy again.

 **22.) Spy:** She can’t quite decide if Ferus and Tru have truly quarreled or if Tru is just doing the same kind of spy work she is – Ferus doesn’t speak of it (and changes the subject whenever she tries to broach the subject) and neither will Tru, who simply moves back and forth between Ferus and Anakin apparently without causing either one of them to feel a need to fuss overly much about it (though Anakin likely complains to Tru about the Teevan being friends with Ferus) – whatever the reason, though, she finds that, once they’ve all been taken to apprentice (and Ferus has Siri Tachi as a new Master), they are all four often sent on joint missions together with their Masters, and, since Anakin accepts everyone and generally seems to make an effort to get along with everyone, except for Ferus, she decides that Tru’s efforts were probably a good idea.

 **23.) Flaw:** The flaw in Darra’s heart is not discovered for many years – in the Temple, full scans all the way down to the blood vessels are not routinely run on those who appear to be perfectly healthy, so it would not be until she was approaching the time when she must either become an apprentice or else be sent off to one branch or another of the Jedi Service Corps and was under quite a bit more stress/strain/pressure than she ever had been, before, that the faulty connection between her aorta and heart would be revealed – and, thankfully, when the point of crisis finally comes about, she’s in a training salle close enough to the Healers’ Ward that she can be rushed to the Healers in plenty of time to be attended to and saved; yet, for the next handful of years, the memory of crushing pain in her chest and the inability to catch her breath around the agony will be one that can give her nightmares and such a pressing need to see Ferus and to touch him, to reassure herself that she really is still alive, that she will seriously begin to wonder if it might not be better to go ahead and ask to be sent to the Service Corps and have done with it, before she can be made an apprentice and put into a position where her weaknesses will be able to wreck some serious damage on others, and not just herself.

 **24.) Vessel:** Properly trained Jedi Healers can do truly miraculous things, with the Force – including make a weak and slightly malformed blood vessel reshape itself in such a way as to attach properly to its heart – and that is the sole reason why Darra survives long enough to eventually be chosen as a Padawan learner by Jedi Knight Soara Antana.

 **25.) Uncertain:** She’s known who would most likely be her Master when she finally got old enough to be chosen as an apprentice for quite some time, before it eventually happens, and so has Tru – Soara Antana has been tracking Darra’s progress for years, since she has an affinity for gymnastics that makes her extremely good at Form IV and Knight Antana is something of a lightsaber virtuoso, quite aggressive in her moves; and Master Ry-Gaul has never bothered to keep his interest in Tru a secret – since Anakin has stolen Obi-Wan, though, Ferus’ fate has been somewhat uncertain . . . enough so, at least, that she is frankly shocked at the identity of the young Knight who finally chooses to apprentice him.

 **26.) Young:** Darra honestly shouldn’t be shocked that the Chalactan Jedi Knight Nemaria Tennyai is the one who chooses Ferus as an apprentice, even if she had never really noticed the woman before she came into the crèche to publicly speak for Ferus (so many people have assumed for so long that Obi-Wan would be the one who would eventually claim Ferus, when the time came, that there really hasn’t been a whole lot of thought given to the possibility of anyone else choosing him, and, given that someone else _has_ to choose him now, since Obi-Wan can’t, the Chalactan Knight probably makes as much sense as anyone else, all things considered); yet, she can’t help but feel as if the wrong choice has been made, somehow, and not just because it’s not Obi-Wan Ferus is calling his Master: Nemaria Tennyai . . . seems like a perfectly nice young woman, but . . . well, she just seems very young (about a handful of years older than Obi-Wan, not that a person can actually tell that, just from looking at her or even from being around her and listening to her. She’s very youthful and full of energy and enthusiasm and, well, _naïve_ is the word that comes to mind. That and _untried_. She comes off more like a Padawan learner, still, than a Knight, to be perfectly honest, the way she bounces about and carries on, which seems doubly odd to Darra, quite frankly, given how calm and meditative and inwardly focused most Chalactans usually are), to be choosing a Padawan (even her first), and rather unprepossessing and, well, _ordinary_ , really, to end up with an apprentice as patently special as Ferus Olin, and it bothers her that no one else really seems to be at all troubled by the unexpected pairing.

 **27.) Familiar:** Ferus is devastated when his Master is killed – and such an ignoble, stupid, senseless death, too! Not slain on mission, fighting for justice and peace or trying to protect the Republic and its citizens, but instead rather ignobly killed in an airspeeder crash on Coruscant, traveling from the Temple to a restaurant near the government district, going to meet an old friend for lunch, a malfunction in the speeder’s engine causing it to overheat, catch fire, and, after bouncing off a nearby shuttle descending through the city’s traffic (the shuttle so large that apparently the being piloting it never even noticed the glancing collision, continuing on in its course without stopping), explode midair before crashing in flaming wreckage into the side of an old manufacturing factory thankfully closed for quite some time (so that no one was there to be hurt), killed all but instantly by the violence of the explosion and fire – and Darra is so relieved when Siri Tachi, returning from her so-called self-exile with a long term secret mission successfully completed to be formally Knighted by the Order, almost immediately shows an interest in Ferus, asking about the possibility of taking him on as her Padawan learner, to finish his apprenticeship, that she almost doesn’t notice, at first, how oddly _familiar_ Tachi seems.

 **28.) End:** If she hears Siri Tachi or only catches a glimpse of her out of the corner of her eye, then she _knows_ her, is comfortable with her, trusts her absolutely; yet, every time she looks at the woman straight on, those blue eyes and that golden blonde hair startle her, shocking her with a feeling of subtle but noticeable _wrongness_ , though it isn’t until she finally figures out that she’s expecting the hair to be lighter (almost white-blonde, like platinum) and the eyes to be darker (not quite brown, but the colors in the hazel mostly dark, except for the vibrant, bright flecks of vivid green speckling them) that she ultimately works out the fact that the Jedi Knight reminds her eerily of a woman from her dreams, the strange dreams, the ones that don’t make sense and leave her feeling as if she’s been made to helplessly witness the end of (all of) the worlds.

 **29.) Rapport:** Darra had been half hoping, for Ferus’ sake, that the change in Masters would somehow keep the High Council from sending him on as many joint missions with Skywalker and Obi-Wan; she hadn’t counted on the slightly awkward but seemingly genuine friendship and rapport between Obi-Wan and Siri Tachi, though, and, if anything, since Obi-Wan and Siri Tachi seem to work so well together, they end up being partnered far more (and often without any others added to the group, to act as buffers between Skywalker and Ferus) than had been the case when his Master was Knight Tennyai.

 **30.) Pass:** Now that she’s being sent less and less often on group missions, since Ferus and Skywalker and their Masters seem to be the High Council’s favorites for the more involved missions and Tru and Master Ry-Gaul are so deep in specialized intelligence ops that they’re hardly ever available to be paired up with anyone anymore, Darra finds, to her surprise, that the High Council is giving her and her Master more and more covert missions, and, since most Master-Padawan pairs will, on undercover missions, attempt to pass as parent and child, she finds herself being constantly surprised (and also often quite amused, if vaguely uneasy about how easy it usually is to fool other supposedly sentient beings) at how well they manage to pull that particular trick off, her Master’s pale skin and dark eyes and hair with its mix of medium-light brown and russet apparently so close to her own coloring that no one seems to notice that her face is much rounder, her hair closer to golden brown, and that her Master (who’s not much more than a decade older than Obi-Wan Kenobi) barely seems old enough to be her mother.

 **31.) Apologize:** Her first joint mission with Ferus and Skywalker and Tru and their respective Masters after Siri Tachi’s return, to Haaridan, results in her receiving an extremely nasty blaster wound to the thigh that puts her out of commission for several months, and she’s so completely furious at Skywalker for causing the hit (if he hadn’t twisted about and knocked into her and thrown her off balance, it never would have happened, for stars’ sakes!) that she’s forced to literally bite her tongue and the inside of her cheek, to keep from giving him a piece of her mind, instead of playing nice and acting as though she forgives him, when he finally slinks into the Healers’ Ward to apologize, mentally grumbling to herself the whole while about how much Ferus is going to owe her for being good and keeping her temper and so grateful that Skywalker is apparently so full of himself that he’s seemingly taken it as a matter of course that she would forgive him (as she’s fairly certain she wouldn’t have had the patience to try to convince him otherwise if he hadn’t been expecting her easy forgiveness) that it doesn’t occur to her for a long time afterwards how truly, genuinely eager the former slave had seemed to be for her friendship.

 **32.) Scene:** The poem’s an assignment and a _joke_ , for stars’ sakes, a poke at all the famous (and supposedly wonderful) works they’ve been studying, all the repetitive themes permeating all the things they’ve been reading and viewing for the Mid Rim contemporary culture course, and, if she weren’t already far too used to Skywalker’s histrionics and the way that he seems to actively seek to blow everything to do with Ferus wildly out of proportion, with no one doing much of anything about it, she’d be doing her level best to bring a complaint against him for so nearly destroying her datapad (which has a lot on it besides just this one damned group project, blast it all!); instead, though, she unhesitatingly gives Skywalker a piece of her mind, counting on his apparent desire to cultivate her friendship to motivate him enough to at least make an attempt at making amends, by repairing the damage to her datapad and apologizing for causing a scene.

 **33.) Vendetta:** There’s much more to this Granta Omega person than meets the eye – she can _sense_ it, _feel_ it, almost make out the shape of the mystery surrounding him, if she just closes her eyes and concentrates hard enough – the Jedi Order, though, seems to be far less concerned with uncovering the truth behind the man’s apparent vendetta against the Order than simply stopping him, by whatever means possible or necessary, and, considering how much damage he’s already done (killing even Master Yaddle, for stars’ sakes!) and how clearly insane Jenna Zan Arbor, his new partner in crime, is (being so utterly lacking in conscience that the woman frankly reminds Darra of the stories she’s heard of the Sith), she’s not sure she can really blame the High Council Masters for their desire to see the end of the man, even if it does bother her, somewhat, that there seems to be an increasing amount of emphasis on simply killing the man rather than outsmarting and capturing him . . . though soon enough she has more than sufficient problems of her own to worry about that she no longer has the energy to spare for her discomfort with the Order’s increasingly vengeful attitude towards Granta Omega.

 **34.) Disgrace:** She’s taken all the proper precautions – spitting Sith hells, they’ve _both_ taken precautions, _lots_ of precautions, more than enough precautions that they shouldn’t have to worry about _anything_ , even accidents! They know the possible consequences of screwing up, if they’re discovered before they can take steps to somehow make things right again, the risk associated with every amorous encounter they have, given the Jedi Order’s absolutely unbending (and, to her mind, at least, entirely hypocritical, given that males in the Order are actively encouraged to have casual liaisons outside of the Order, especially while on missions, to supposedly help promote and advance the spread of Force-sensitivity in the galaxy without also endangering Jedi with inappropriate attachments to offspring, mates, family) attitude towards the possibility of pregnancy among its members (except for those rare few from species so endangered that they _must_ procreate, even if they’re not allowed to truly have families), anyone so unfortunate as to be found with child, no matter what the circumstances, being cast out and either sent to the Service Corps in disgrace or else simply sent packing, back to the families who turned them over to the Temple for training in the first place (though the Order will, sometimes, choose to keep the baby, if the child is sufficiently Force-sensitive) – and so at first she’s sure that it must be some mistake on her part (either she’s lost count of her days, somehow, or else she’s taken something or put so much stress on her body that it’s caused a disruption in her regular flows), though that certainty soon begins to fade, when days turn into weeks and finally a month . . . at which point her sureness takes on a whole other shape, one so terrifying that frankly she’s surprised that no one seems to notice that she’s living wrapped in a perpetual fog of panic and fear.

 **35.) Failure:** All things considered, she’s proud of herself, for holding it together enough to help get Astri Oddo Divinian and her son, Lune, away from that traitorous scumbag, Senator Bog Divinian, and (doubtlessly) end the Senator’s political career; with the attempted massacre in the Senate, though, and the deaths . . . well, she’s not the only one who requires comfort, when the death toll mounts over forty, and she clings to Ferus with unbridled desperation, mouth locked to his so she will not betray herself by speaking words of love, body rising desperately to meet every thrust and then rolling to ride him until the whole of her feels rubbed raw from friction, final climax bringing almost as much pain as pleasure, unsurprised to find that she isn’t the only one whose eyes are slowly leaking tears, as they lie tangled together, exhausted, on the bed they broke into the empty suite to use, even the comfort of closeness barely enough to help ease the ache of failure.

 **36.) Coward:** She’s a coward and has no business trying to be a Jedi and that’s all there is to it: she knows Ferus is strong enough and fast enough both to dodge out of the way of the blaster fire and pull Tru back out of the way, so the dodged blast won’t hit him; she’s missed two of her menses, now, though, and she can feel the changes in her body already, and she just – she can’t she can’t handle that, can’t deal with being dismissed from the Order for such a thing, and so she throws herself between her beloved and a smiling Granta Omega, and she smiles back, briefly, sadly, as she feels herself falling, already fading down into the Force, the sound of Ferus’ voice desperately calling her name the last thing she hears before the darkness claims her.

　


	2. The New Hero’s Face

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This would be the group project “poem” that Darra, Ferus, and Tru write. Certain lines may sound familiar to readers, as they are taken from certain modern and contemporary pieces, to give the “joke” authenticity.

Mid Rim Contemporary Culture - Advanced Seminar

**The New Hero’s Face**

By: Ferus Olin; Darra Thel-Tanis; Tru Veld

　

_Pour the dream. Speak_

_in myth. Pen words of story to call the hero:_

_transfigure life._

 

There is no more luxury for modernism. It is out of the question: there is no schizophrenic euphoria, only hard truths

(thoughts)

leaking out of shadowed corners.

 

 _For tragedy, one must have a hero with a_ fatal flaw _that will cause his_ fall _, guided by the hand of_ fate _._

 _For tragedy, one must have_ empathy _._

 _For tragedy, one must have_ destiny _._

 _For tragedy, one must have_ love _and_ betrayal _, but above all, there must be_ death _. No,_ _above all, there must be a_ story _._

_Words shape_

_(distort)_

_what is real. By capturing the truth in words it changes._

_(We are all shoved into the spaces between the lines.)_

_Words have power. Words can carve_

_(change)_

_create_

_(cheat)_

_solidify a hero out of pure need._

 

Fight not with fate:

ask no questions:

it’s how the story goes.

 _(How it_ must _go.)_

Be happy:

walk alone:

die their champion

when they scream for blood.

 _(Sacrifice – destiny – darling –_ hero _!)_

Create your chains, as

_(mirror mirror O mirror)_

their need creates

_(shapes)_

you.

 

"O my darling child, you are beautiful."

_Your soul is a temptation._

 

There is no need for fiction. Not in this.

Dissolution is delightfully easy.

There is bone

there is broken glass

there is lying

(phantasmal thoughts)

and no perfect endings.

 

_This is the way the story goes. The rules bind like ropes._

 

Click.

 

_and the hero in the story, the bloodstained cloaked stranger with dark(bright) eyes and full_

_whirl of cape flapping, with soft mouth and iron jaws and a voice too light(dark) to_

_remember or forget, he heard the hitching shrill and turned back, shining_

 

Click.

 

To escape, all one must do

_(I defy. I am!)_

is choose to break

_(the soul caught alight)_

the law.

 

( . . . )

 

 _The only guarantee is balance_ but

 _balance can_ shift _._

 

All things end

_(say die and I will die; say die and watch me die)_

we all fall down

_(bang bang you hit the ground)_

not with a bang but a whimper.

 

Heroes die, you see?

 

_(Myths that are believed in tend to become true.)_

 

Heroes die again (and again) and again.

 

The trick –

_(Click.)_

The trick –

**(Click.)**

The trick is transmutation by words to

_(freedom)_

transformation

_(metamorphosis)_

resurrection

_(creation)_

the consumption of death –

_(death, thou shalt die)_

for change is ownership.

_(Self-realization.)_

 

( . . . )

 

(You hit the ground, darling. I think

you just died, sweetheart.)

 

Bang.

 

**Bang.**

 

_(Laughter.)_

(Dreams.)

 

_Perhaps this is victory, too._

**Author's Note:**

>  **Warning:** This story functions as a sort of compressed codex for Darra’s life, as she has been written (or at least referred to) and is going to be written in my not even nearly complete AU **Star Wars** series **_You Became to Me_**. If anything doesn’t make sense, please, feel free to ask! There are some things I can’t elaborate on much more, for fear of at least partially spoiling some stories still in the works, but I realize that such a radical retelling of some parts of EU history could be somewhat confusing, so I invite questions from readers who’re puzzled and/or curious! For clarity's sake, it might help to keep in mind that Darra thinks that she’s in love with Ferus Olin, but it’s a lot closer to obsession than real affection and is, at least in part, inspired by a particular power of Ferus’ that encourages others to like/love him. After Ferus permits Darra to pursue/seduce him, she becomes what is commonly known within the Order as his pillow friend, but he is by no means monogamous. Her attachment to Ferus is always far greater than his attachment to Darra.
> 
>  **Story Notes:** **1.)** Since this is part of a larger on-going AU series that in some respects fairly closely mirrors or follows events of canon (up to a certain point, anyway), readers should please keep in mind that certain characters and events from the prequel movies/novelizations of the films and even events/places/people referenced in the EU or Expanded Universe may be mentioned or alluded to in this story. If anyone has any questions about whether someone or something is AU, canon, or EU canon, please feel free to ask! **2.)** Readers should probably be aware that I am roughly estimating (guestimating might be a better word) the original publication date for most of the character study pieces in the **_You Became to Me_** series (and indeed most of my stories, especially the ones written over a long period of time), based on when I roughed out notes for them in the story notebooks I carry everywhere with me and when I can recall having worked on certain groups of characters. The year is going to be accurate, but the month might be off and the day will almost certainly be randomly chosen, since the online account I had originally posted many of these stories to no longer exists. I tend to go back and edit things that are in series whenever I get the time or a new idea causes me to have to make room for something else plot-wise, and odds are good that a story could have been edited for typos as recently as the day of its posting here, but the original version will likely be much older and fairly close to the publication date that I attach to it, if anyone's curious!
> 
>  **Clarification Note:** One of the reasons why my AU **Star Wars** series _**You Became to Me**_ is so entirely not even nearly complete has to do with the fact that I really started writing at the wrong end of the prequel trilogy for an AU (in my defense, though, when I started what became my _Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith_ trio, which is over a million words long, I thought I was doing a sort of one-shot fix-it based on an idea I got for "fixing" RotS by changing something that happens very near the end of James Luceno's EU novel _Labyrinth of Evil_ , which is set immediately prior to RotS). One of these days, I fully intend to rectify that problem by going back and starting from the beginning, with an AU rewrite of TPM, which is why I took the time to do a character study sketch for a supporting character like Darra. She'll probably be showing up again, in a more prominent role, either whenever I get around to that AU rewrite of TPM or whenever I get around to following up on the AU rewrite of TPM with other stories. Folks might want to keep that in mind when reading this, since technically this is spoilerish for at least one and possibly more AU novels/stories that I haven't gotten around to writing yet!


End file.
